The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) recently released an in-depth report on terrorism in the United States. Covering April 2009 to February 2015, the report (titled “The Age of the Wolf”) found that during that period, “more people have been killed in America by non-Islamic domestic terrorists than jihadists.” The SPLC asserted that “the jihadist threat is a tremendous one,” pointing out that al-Qaeda’s attacks of September 11, 2001 remain the deadliest in U.S. history. But the study also noted that the second deadliest was carried out not by Islamists, but by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995—and law enforcement, the SPLC stressed, are doing the public a huge disservice if they view terrorism as an exclusively Islamist phenomenon.

The report, in a sense, echoed the assertions that President Barack Obama made when he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in February and stressed that Muslims don’t have the market cornered on religious extremism. In the minds of far-right Republicans, Obama committed the ultimate sin by daring to mention that Christianity has a dark side and citing the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition as two examples from the distant past. Obama wasn’t attacking Christianity on the whole but rather, was making the point that just as not all Christians can be held responsible for the horrors of the Inquisition, not all Muslims can be blamed for the violent extremism of ISIS (the Islamic State, Iraq and Syria), the Taliban, al-Qaeda or Boko Haram. But Obama certainly didn’t need to look 800 or 900 years in the past to find examples of extreme Christianists committing atrocities. Violent Christianists are a reality in different parts of the world—including the United States—and the fact that the mainstream media don’t give them as much coverage as ISIS or Boko Haram doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

Below are six extreme Christianist groups that have shown their capacity for violence and fanaticism.

1. The Army of God

A network of violent Christianists that has been active since the early 1980s, the Army of God openly promotes killing abortion providers—and the long list of terrorists who have been active in that organization has included Paul Jennings Hill (who was executed by lethal injection in 2003 for the 1994 killings of abortion doctor John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett), John C. Salvi (who killed two receptionists when he attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1994) and Eric Rudolph, who is serving life in prison for his role in the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996 and other terrorist acts. Rudolph, in fact, has often been exalted as a Christian hero on the Army of God’s website, as have fellow Army of God members such as Scott Roeder (who is serving life without parole for murdering Wichita, Kansas-based abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009), Shelley Shannon (who attempted to kill Tiller in 2003) and Michael Frederick Griffin (who is serving a life sentence for the 1993 killing of Dr. David Gunn, an OB-GYN, in Pensacola, Florida).

Although primarily an anti-abortion organization, the Army of God also has a history of promoting violence against gays. And one of the terrorist acts that Rudolph confessed to was bombing a lesbian bar in Atlanta in 1997.

2. Eastern Lightning, a.k.a. the Church of the Almighty God

Founded in Henan Province, China in 1990, Eastern Lightning (also known as the Church of the Almighty God or the Church of the Gospel’s Kingdom) is a Christianist cult with an end-time/apocalypse focus: Eastern Lightning believes that the world is coming to an end, and in the meantime, its duty is to slay as many demons as possible. While most Christianists have an extremely patriarchal viewpoint (much like their Islamist counterparts) and consider women inferior to men, Eastern Lightning believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the form of a Chinese woman. But they are quite capable of violence against women: in May 2014, for example, members of the cult beat a 37-year-old woman named Wu Shuoyan to death in a McDonalds in Zhaoyuan, China when she refused to give them her phone number. Eastern Lightning members Zhang Lidong and his daughter, Zhang Fan, were convicted of murder for the crime and executed in February. In a 2014 interview in prison, Lidong expressed no remorse when he said of Shuoyan, “I beat her with all my might and stamped on her too. She was a demon. We had to destroy her.”

Eastern Lightning’s other acts of violence have ranged from the killing of a grammar school student in 2010 (in retaliation, police believe, for one of the child’s relatives wanting to leave the cult) to cult member Min Yongjun using a knife to attack an elderly woman and a group of schoolchildren in Chenpeng in 2012. Christian groups are not exempt from Eastern Lightning’s fanaticism: in 2002, cult members kidnapped 34 members of a Christian group called the China Gospel Fellowship and held them captive for two months in the hope of forcing them to join their cult. Although mainly active in the communist People’s Republic of China, Eastern Lighting has been trying to expand its membership in Hong Kong.

3. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)

The mainstream media have had much to say about the Islamist brutality of Boko Haram, but one terrorist group they haven’t paid nearly as much attention to is the Lord’s Resistance Army—which was founded by Joseph Kony (a radical Christianist) in Uganda in 1987 and has called for the establishment of a severe Christian fundamentalist government in that country. The LRA, according to Human Rights Watch, has committed thousands of killings and kidnappings—and along the way, its terrorism spread from Uganda to parts of the Congo, the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan. The word “jihadist” is seldom used in connection with the LRA, but in fact, the LRA’s tactics are not unlike those of ISIS or Boko Haram. And the governments Kony hopes to establish in Sub-Saharan Africa would implement a Christianist equivalent of Islamic Sharia law.

4. TheNational Liberation Front of Tripura

India is not only a country of Hindus and Sikhs, but also, of Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics and Protestants. Most of India’s Christians are peaceful, but a major exception is the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT). Active in the state of Tripura in Northeastern India since 1989, NLFT is a paramilitary Christianist movement that hopes to secede from India and establish a Christian fundamentalist government in Tripura. NLFT has zero tolerance for any religion other than Christianity, and the group has repeatedly shown a willingness to kill, kidnap or torture Hindus who refuse to be converted to its extreme brand of Protestant fundamentalism.

In 2000, NLFT vowed to kill anyone who participated in Durga Puja (an annual Hindu festival) And in May 2003, at least 30 Hindus were murdered during one of NLFT’s killing sprees.

5. The Phineas Priesthood

White supremacist groups don’t necessarily have a religious orientation: some of them welcome atheists as long as they believe in white superiority. But the Christian Identity movement specifically combines white supremacist ideology with Christianist terrorism, arguing that violence against non-WASPs is ordained by God and that white Anglo Saxon Protestants are God’s chosen people. The modern Christian Identity movement in the U.S. has been greatly influenced by the Ku Klux Klan—an organization that has committed numerous acts of terrorism over the years—and in the 1970s, new Christian Identity groups like the Aryan Nations and the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) emerged. Another Christian Identity group of recent decades has been the Phineas Priesthood, whose members have been involved in violent activities ranging from abortion clinic bombings to bank robberies (mainly in the Pacific Northwest). On November 28, 2014, Phineas Priesthood member Larry Steven McQuilliams went on a violent rampage in Austin, Texas—where he fired over 100 rounds at various targets (including a federal courthouse, the local Mexican Consulate building and a police station) before being shot and killed by police.

6. The Concerned Christians

One of the ironic things about some Christianists is the fact that although they believe that Jews must be converted to Christianity, they consider themselves staunch supporters of Israel. And some of them believe in violently forcing all Muslims out of Israel. The Concerned Christians, a Christianist doomsday cult that was founded by pastor Monte “Kim” Miller in Denver in the 1980s, alarmed Colorado residents when, in 1998, at least 60 of its members suddenly quit their jobs, abandoned their homes and went missing—and it turned out there was reason for concern. In 1999, Israeli officials arrested 14 members of the Concerned Christians in Jerusalem and deported them from Israel because they suspected them of plotting terrorist attacks against Muslims. One likely target, according to Israeli police, was Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque—the same mosque that was targeted in 1969 (when a Christianist from Australia named Denis Michael Rohan unsuccessfully tried to destroy it by arson) and, Israeli police suspect, was a likely target in 2014 (when Adam Everett Livix, a Christianist from Texas, was arrested by Israeli police on suspicion of plotting to blow up Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem).

In 2008, Denver’s KUSA-TV (an NBC affiliate) reported that members of the Concerned Citizens had gone into hiding and that Miller hadn’t been seen in ten years.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Viewers of national television news see far more
images of Muslims as domestic terrorists and Latinos as immigrant
lawbreakers than is actually the case in statistics, according to a
recently published study by a communications professor at the University
of Illinois.
The study, published online last month by the Journal of Communication,
sampled 146 episodes of news programs focused on breaking news carried
by major broadcast and cable networks between 2008 and 2012. Ninety of
the programs included crime stories.

Travis Dixon, who led the
research while a professor at the University of California in Los
Angeles, found that among those described as domestic terrorists in the
news reports, 81 percent were identifiable as Muslims. Yet in FBI
reports from those years, only 6 percent of domestic terror suspects
were Muslim.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

...As Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, noted in its report released last year, the vast majority of terror attacks in Europe were perpetrated by separatist groups. For example, in 2013, there were 152 terror attacks in Europe. Only two of them were “religiously motivated,” while 84 were predicated upon ethno-nationalist or separatist beliefs....Even after one of the worst terror attacks ever in Europe in 2011, when Anders Breivik slaughtered 77 people in Norway to further his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and pro-“Christian Europe” agenda as he stated in his manifesto, how much press did we see in the United States? Yes, it was covered, but not the way we see when a Muslim terrorist is involved. Plus we didn’t see terrorism experts fill the cable news sphere asking how we can stop future Christian terrorists. In fact, even the suggestion that Breivik was a “Christian terrorist” wasmet with outrageby many, including Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.

Or what about the (dare I mention them) Jewish terrorists? Per the 2013 State Department’s report on terrorism, there were 399 acts of terror committed by Israeli settlers in what are known as “price tag” attacks. These Jewish terrorists attacked Palestinian civilians causing physical injuries to 93 of them and also vandalized scores of mosques and Christian churches....Back in the United States, the percentage of terror attacks committed by Muslims is almost as miniscule as in Europe. An FBI study looking at terrorism committed on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 found that94 percent of the terror attacks were committed by non-Muslims. In actuality, 42 percent of terror attacks were carried out by Latino-related groups, followed by 24 percent perpetrated by extreme left-wing actors.

And as a 2014 study by University of North Carolina found, since the 9/11 attacks, Muslim-linked terrorism has claimed the lives of 37 Americans. In that same time period, more than 190,000 Americans were murdered (PDF).

In fact in 2013, it was actually more likely Americans would be killed by a toddler than a terrorist. In that year, three Americans were killed in the Boston Marathon bombing. How many people did toddlers kill in 2013? Five, all by accidentallyshooting a gun.

But our media simply do not cover the non-Muslim terror attacks with same gusto. Why? It’s a business decision. Stories about scary “others” play better. It’s a story that can simply be framed as good versus evil with Americans being the good guy and the brown Muslim as the bad.... [Read Full Article]

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

There's a certain ritual that each and every one of the world's billion-plus Muslims, especially those living in Western countries, is expected to go through immediately following any incident of violence involving a Muslim perpetrator. It's a ritual that is continuing now with the Sydney hostage crisis, in which a deranged self-styled sheikh named Man Haron Monis took several people hostage in a downtown café.

Here is what Muslims and Muslim organizations are expected to say: "As a Muslim, I condemn this attack and terrorism in any form."

This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise. The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion. This sort of thinking — blaming an entire group for the actions of a few individuals, assuming the worst about a person just because of their identity — is the very definition of bigotry.

It is time for that ritual to end: non-Muslims in all countries, and today especially those in Australia, should finally take on the correct assumption that Muslims hate terrorism just as much as they do, and cease expecting Muslims to prove their innocence just because of their faith.

Bigoted assumptions are the only plausible reason for this ritual to exist, which means that maintaining the ritual is maintaining bigotry. Otherwise, we wouldn't expect Muslims to condemn Haron Monis — who is clearly a crazy person who has no affiliations with formal religious groups — any more than we would expect Christians to condemn Timothy McVeigh. Similarly, if someone blames all Jews for the act of, say, extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank, we immediately and correctly reject that position as prejudiced. We understand that such an accusation is hateful and wrong — but not when it is applied to Muslims.

It is easy for editors who are not attorneys and have not
represented hundreds of victims of FBI abuse to give ill-informed legal
advice and advise the public to waive the constitutionally protected
right to have an attorney present when approached by the FBI.

America is one of the few nations in the world whose
Constitution assumes that the people should take precautions to hold the
government accountable. Exercising one’s constitutionally protected
right to have a lawyer present when approached by the FBI helps ensure
agents are behaving both constitutionally and efficiently. Meanwhile,
people who feel their rights are secured with legal counsel present will
have the confidence to be more open.

Our concern with the FBI selectively targeting the Muslim
community for interrogation and recruitment of agent provocateurs is
primarily because it has been documented that such profiling is
ineffective, a waste of resources and actually makes our nation less
safe and less free. Law enforcement must invest our limited public
resources conducting investigations based on probable cause, not
religious profiling. Having a lawyer present ensures that the FBI has a
legitimate investigative purpose for interrogating Americans and are not
acting based on politically acceptable biases that merely serve to
intimidate religious minorities and waste taxpayer dollars.

Even though the Trib failed to request any such evidence from
us, it claimed “there is no evidence local FBI agents have been
abusive.” I’ll wager that the Trib’s own police reporters would find
this assertion patently naïve. The Founders did not write the Bill of
Rights and then reject it because there was no evidence that the new
American government was going to be abusive.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has
documented how the FBI has targeted law-abiding American Muslims for
interrogation and coerced recruitment as agent provocateurs. According
to Trevor Aaronson, executive director of the Florida Center for
Investigative Journalism, such FBI tactics are similar to that used by
the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) against the
African-American civil rights movement decades ago and has included
engaging in blackmail, extortion and threats of harm to self, family and
friends. Coerced individuals are then forced into mosques to promote
radical violent extremism — using taxpayer dollars — to unstable and
mentally disturbed youths.

These programs are not only contrary to the protections
enshrined in the Constitution, but are ineffective and make our nation
less safe and less free. Even with the rise of Islamic State, those
engaging in acts of terrorism on U.S. soil have more often attended
churches or synagogue than mosques, and yet the FBI is not engaging in
similar tactics against the Christian or Jewish communities — nor should
they.

Engaging in criminal plans should make one the subject of a
FBI investigation — not following a particular faith. When the FBI
wastes resources in questioning individuals who have engaged in no
wrongdoing, they may miss catching some of the overwhelming amount of
criminals and terrorists who have nothing to do with that faith.

The Trib used Sami Osmakac as an example. The Trib does not
mention that Osmakac would not have had the potential ability to harm
our community without facilitation by paid FBI agent provocateurs or
that in the same time frame several terrorist attacks were planned in
Tampa by disturbed youths who, unlike Osmakac, were not Muslim.

Selective targeting of a religious minority by the federal
government undermines the Constitution and harms America as a whole.
CAIR has documented how many FBI agents have received false training
that the entire Muslim community is a threat and that Muslims are not
entitled to First Amendment rights. In Florida and nationwide, the
Muslim community has often reported extremists espousing violence in
mosques who turned out to be paid FBI agent provocateurs. Examples such
as these abound.

Let us not forget that only last year an FBI agent who had a
documented history of beating up suspects and witnesses and falsifying
evidence, threatened several Orlando Muslims with false charges to
pressure them to become informants, and then shot in the back and killed
one of them after six hours of interrogation in their home three days
later.

Counter-productive tactics that infringe upon the rights of
religious minorities are not necessary to keep our nation safe. American
Muslims are invested in the security of our nation and have a track
record of voluntary cooperation with law enforcement on the rare
occasion a threat should arise. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller told
the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that “many of our cases are a result
of the cooperation from the Muslim community in the United States.” The
U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida also has repeatedly
thanked the Muslim community for helping keep Florida safe.

We are not a nation of fearful people. Our rights are not
things to be cast aside because someone scary threatens us. Groups such
as IS strip people of their rights, and we should not do this in
America. If we willingly cast aside the liberty that previous
generations have bled for, then the terrorists win.

Just as taking precautionary measures to protect our security
is reasonable, taking precautionary measures to protect our rights is
also reasonable. That is why CAIR’s recommendation of having legal
counsel present when talking to law enforcement is the right balance.
Neither liberty nor security is sacrificed. Instead, both are protected.

This is precisely the kind of ambivalence that AIPAC
adherents describe as destructive. And yet even Israeli politicians recognize
that AIPAC faces a shifting landscape of opinion. Shimon Peres, who served as
Prime Minister and, most recently, as President, says, “My impression is that
AIPAC is weaker among the younger people. It has a solid majority of people of
a certain age, but it’s not the same among younger people.”..

" Members’ contributions were often bundled. “AIPAC
will select some dentist in Boise, say, to be the bundler,” a former longtime
AIPAC member said. “They tell people in New York and other cities to send their
five-thousand-dollar checks to him. But AIPAC has to teach people
discipline—because all those people who are giving five thousand dollars would
ordinarily want recognition. The purpose is to make the dentist into a big
shot—he’s the one who has all this money to give to the congressman’s
campaign.” AIPAC representatives tried to match each member of Congress with a
contact who shared the congressman’s interests. If a member of Congress rode a
Harley-Davidson, AIPAC found a contact who did, too. The goal was to develop
people who could get a member of Congress on the phone at a moment’s
notice."

In the early days, Howard Berman said, “AIPAC was knocking
on an unlocked door.” Most Americans have been favorably disposed toward Israel
since its founding, and no other lobby spoke for them on a national scale.
Unlike other lobbies—such as the N.R.A., which is opposed by various anti-gun
groups—AIPAC did not face a significant and well-funded countervailing force.
It also had the resources to finance an expensive and emotionally charged form
of persuasion. Dine estimated that in the eighties and nineties contributions
from AIPAC members often constituted roughly ten to fifteen per cent of a
typical congressional campaign budget. AIPAC provided lavish trips to Israel
for legislators and other opinion-makers.

Nevertheless, the lobby did not endorse or rank candidates.
“We made the decision to be one step removed,” Dine said. “Orrin Hatch once
said, ‘Dine, your genius is to play an invisible bass drum, and the Jews hear
it when you play it.’ ” In 1982, after an Illinois congressman named Paul
Findley described himself as “Yasir Arafat’s best friend in Congress,” AIPAC
members encouraged Dick Durbin, a political unknown, to run against him. Robert
Asher, a Chicago businessman, sent out scores of letters to his friends, along
with Durbin’s position paper on Israel, asking them to send checks. Durbin won,
and he is now the Senate Majority Whip. (Findley later wrote a book that made
extravagant claims about the power of the Israel lobby.) In 1984, AIPAC
affiliates decided that Senator Charles Percy, an Illinois Republican, was
unfriendly to Israel. In the next election, Paul Simon, a liberal Democrat, won
Percy’s seat. Dine said at the time, “Jews in America, from coast to coast,
gathered to oust Percy. And American politicians—those who hold public
positions now, and those who aspire—got the message.”…

In the spring of 2008, AIPAC moved from cramped quarters on
Capitol Hill to a gleaming new seven-story building on H Street, downtown. At
the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Howard Kohr introduced Sheldon Adelson, a casino
magnate who had been a generous donor to AIPAC since the nineties, and who had
helped underwrite congressional trips to Israel (paying only for Republican
members). On this bright spring day, according to someone who was in the
audience, Adelson recalled that Kohr had telephoned him, asking him to have
lunch. Adelson remembered wondering, How much is this lunch going to cost me?
Well, he went on, it cost him ten million dollars: the building was the result.
He later told his wife that Kohr should have asked him for fifty million….

AIPAC’s hold on Congress has become institutionalized. Each
year, a month or two before the annual policy conference, AIPAC officials tell
key members what measures they want, so that their activists have something to
lobby for. “Every year, we create major legislation, so they can justify their
existence to their members,” the former congressional aide said. (AIPAC
maintains that only members of Congress initiate legislative action.) AIPAC
board meetings are held in Washington each month, and directors visit members
of Congress. They generally address them by their first names, even if they
haven’t met before. The intimacy is presumed, but also, at times, earned; local
AIPAC staffers, in the manner of basketball recruiters, befriend some members
when they are still serving on the student council. “If you have a dream about
running for office, AIPAC calls you,” one House member said. Certainly, it’s a
rarity when someone undertakes a campaign for the House or the Senate today
without hearing from AIPAC.

In 1996, Brian Baird, a psychologist from Seattle, decided
to run for Congress. Local Democrats asked if he had thought about what he was
going to say to AIPAC. “I had admired Israel since I was a kid,” Baird told me.
“But I also was fairly sympathetic to peaceful resolution and the Palestinian
side. These people said, ‘We respect that, but let’s talk about the issues and
what you might say.’ The difficult reality is this: in order to get elected to
Congress, if you’re not independently wealthy, you have to raise a lot of
money. And you learn pretty quickly that, if AIPAC is on your side, you can do
that. They come to you and say, ‘We’d be happy to host ten-thousand-dollar
fund-raisers for you, and let us help write your annual letter, and please come
to this multi-thousand-person dinner.’ ” Baird continued, “Any member of
Congress knows that AIPAC is associated indirectly with significant amounts of
campaign spending if you’re with them, and significant amounts against you if
you’re not with them.” For Baird, AIPAC-connected money amounted to about two
hundred thousand dollars in each of his races—“and that’s two hundred thousand
going your way, versus the other way: a four-hundred-thousand-dollar swing.”…

Soon after taking office, Baird went on a “virtually
obligatory” trip to Israel: a freshman ritual in which
everything—business-class flights, accommodations at the King David or the
Citadel—is paid for by AIPAC’s charitable arm. The tours are carefully curated.
“They do have you meet with the Palestinian leaders, in a sort of token
process,” Baird said. “But then when you’re done with it they tell you
everything the Palestinian leaders said that’s wrong. And, of course, the
Palestinians don’t get to have dinner with you at the hotel that night.”…

In early 2009, after a brief truce between Israel and Hamas
collapsed in a series of mutual provocations, Israel carried out Operation Cast
Lead, an incursion into Gaza in which nearly fourteen hundred Palestinians were
killed, along with thirteen Israelis. Baird visited the area a few weeks later
and returned several times. As he wrote in an op-ed, he saw “firsthand the devastating
destruction of hospitals, schools, homes, industries, and infrastructure.” That
September, the U.N. Human Rights Council issued a report, based on an inquiry
led by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone, that accused Israel of a
series of possible war crimes. AIPAC attacked the report, saying it was
“rigged.” A month later, an AIPAC-sponsored resolution to condemn the report
was introduced in the House, and three hundred and forty-four members voted in
favor. “I read every single word of that report, and it comported with what I
had seen and heard on the ground in Gaza,” Baird said. “When we had the vote, I
said, ‘We have member after member coming to the floor to vote on a resolution
they’ve never read, about a report they’ve never seen, in a place they’ve never
been.’ ” Goldstone came under such pressure that threats were made to ban him
from his grandson’s bar mitzvah at a Johannesburg synagogue. He eventually
wrote an op-ed in which he expressed regret for his conclusions, saying,
“Civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” Other
members of the council stood by the report.

Baird said, “When key votes are cast, the question on the
House floor, troublingly, is often not ‘What is the right thing to do for the
United States of America?’ but ‘How is AIPAC going to score this?’ ” He added,
“There’s such a conundrum here, of believing that you’re supporting Israel,
when you’re actually backing policies that are antithetical to its highest
values and, ultimately, destructive for the country.” In talks with Israeli
officials, he found that his inquiries were not treated with much respect. In
2003, one of his constituents, Rachel Corrie, was killed by a bulldozer driven
by an Israeli soldier, as she protested the demolition of Palestinians’ homes
in Gaza. At first, he said, the officials told him, “There’s a simple
explanation—here are the facts.” Or, “We will look into it.” But, when he
continued to press, something else would emerge. “There is a disdain for the
U.S., and a dismissal of any legitimacy of our right to question—because who
are we to talk about moral values?” Baird told me. “Whether it’s that we didn’t
help early enough in the Holocaust, or look at what we did to our
African-Americans, or our Native Americans—whatever! And they see us, members
of Congress, as basically for sale. So they want us to shut up and play the game.”…

“I think there is a growing sense among members that things
are done just to placate AIPAC, and that AIPAC is not really working to advance
what is in the interest of the United States.” He concluded, “We all took an
oath of office. And AIPAC, in many instances, is asking us to ignore it.”

A few months later, the Gaza war began, and AIPAC mobilized
again. “There were conference calls, mass e-mails, talking points for the day,”
a congressional aide said. “AIPAC activists would e-mail me, with fifteen other
AIPAC activists cc’d, and then those people would respond, saying, ‘I agree
entirely with what the first e-mail said!’ ”…

It didn’t hurt AIPAC’s cause that the enemy was Hamas, whose
suicide bombings a decade ago killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, and whose
rocket attacks in recent years have terrorized citizens, particularly in
southern Israel. As Israel pressed its offensive, and hundreds of Palestinian
civilians were killed, AIPAC argued, as did Netanyahu, that the casualties came
only because Hamas was using human shields. Online, AIPAC posted a short film,
“Israel’s Moral Defense,” which depicted an Israeli major in a quandary.
Looking at a schoolyard filled with girls in neat uniforms, he sees fighters
with a rocket launcher not far behind them. Should he order his men to fire
their machine guns, and risk hitting the girls, or hold back, and risk the
rocket killing Israelis? “I didn’t pull the trigger,” the soldier says. “We are
totally different. . . . I am very proud to be in an army that has this level
of morality.” A couple of weeks after the film appeared, Israeli shells struck
a United Nations school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, killing twenty-one people
and injuring more than ninety; it was the sixth U.N. school that Israel had
bombed. The next day, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Navi Pillay, pointed out that, as Israeli forces attacked homes, schools, and
hospitals, the U.S. was supplying them with heavy weaponry. Almost
simultaneously, the House passed an AIPAC-supported resolution denouncing
Hamas’s use of human shields and condemning an inquiry into Israel’s Gaza
operations that Pillay was sponsoring.

According to congressional staffers, some members of
Congress seemed eager to make up for their recent apostasy on the Iran
negotiations. While Reid and his colleagues went to extraordinary lengths to
fund the Iron Dome missile-defense system, the House leadership engaged in the
same mission. The vote in the House came late on the night of Friday, August
1st—the last possible moment before the summer recess. The earlier resolutions
that AIPAC had sponsored during the war had passed unanimously, with no record
of individual votes, but on this vote the roll was called. (AIPAC sometimes
asks congressional leaders to call the roll when a decisive victory seems
likely.) “I think AIPAC thought this vote would be one hundred per cent,” Jim
Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, said. It was close: out of four hundred and
thirty-five members, only eight voted no. Moran, who has been in Congress since
1990, and is retiring this year, was one of four Democrats who voted against
the resolution. As a longtime member of the Defense Appropriations Committee,
he did not believe that there was any urgent need for the funding. “We have put
about nine hundred million dollars into the Iron Dome,” he argued. “We know
that there are many millions unexpended in Israel’s Iron Dome account. And
Israel was to get three hundred and fifty-one million on October 1st, for Iron
Dome.”

Beto O’Rourke, a freshman Democrat from El Paso, also voted
against the funding. “I tried to find him on the floor, but I couldn’t,” Moran
said. “I wanted him to switch his vote. Now, he might not have switched it
anyway, because—as shocking as it may be—he’s in Congress solely to do what he
considers to be the right thing. I’m afraid he may have a tough race in
November.” The morning after the vote, O’Rourke e-mailed a local AIPAC
activist, Stuart Schwartz, to explain his vote, according to a knowledgeable
person. In his explanation, which he also posted on Facebook, he pointed out
that he had voted for Iron Dome in the past, and had supported the funds that
were scheduled to arrive in October. But, he wrote, “I could not in good
conscience vote for borrowing $225 million more to send to Israel, without debate
and without discussion, in the midst of a war that has cost more than a
thousand civilian lives already, too many of them children.” Within hours,
O’Rourke was flooded with e-mails, texts, and calls. The next day, the El Paso
Times ran a front-page story with the headline “O’ROURKE VOTE DRAWS CRITICISM.”
In the story, Stuart Schwartz, who is described as having donated a thousand
dollars to O’Rourke’s previous campaign, commented that O’Rourke “chooses to
side with the rocket launchers and terror tunnel builders.” A mass e-mail
circulated, reading “The Following Is Shameful, El Paso Has an Anti-Israel
Congressman. . . . Do Not Reëlect Beto O’Rourke.” At the bottom was the address
of AIPAC’s Web site, and a snippet of text: “AIPAC is directly responsible for
the overwhelming support this legislation received on the Hill. If you are not
a member of AIPAC, I strongly recommend that you join. Every dollar helps fund
this important work in Congress.”

The day that Congress passed the Iron Dome bills happened to
be an especially deadly one in Gaza. In the city of Rafah, Israeli troops
pursued Hamas fighters with such overwhelming force that about a hundred and
fifty Palestinians were killed, many of them women and children. Israel’s
critics in the region have been energized. Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian
legislator, told me that Congress had sent a clear message by funding Iron Dome
that day. “Congress was telling Israel, ‘You go ahead and kill, and we will
fund it for you.’ ” She argued that Israelis had dominated American political
discourse on the war, as they have for decades on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. “They say, ‘The Palestinians are all terrorists, they are the people
we don’t know, they are alien, foreign, strange—but Israelis are like us.’ Who shaped
the presentation, in the U.S.? AIPAC, to a large degree.”

Friday, August 29, 2014

Yet
another problematic aspect is related to the broader issues coming from
the War on Terrorism. The US government’s constant involvement in the
Muslim world and Palestine/Israel conflict necessitates a modicum of
engagement with American Muslim leadership in such a way to lend support
for the administration’s efforts. American Muslim leaders were asked to
partner with America’s elite in the soft imperial power project
directed at the Muslim world. Even though the soft power is anything but
soft with drones used at will and bombing campaigns every so often,
Muslim leaders engaged public diplomacy and became America’s soft power
faces across the Muslim world and in return the government provided
access to grants, resources and status for the participants. Winning the
hearts and minds through public diplomacy while bombing campaigns never
stopped.

Yet,
what is sad and funny is that most if not all American Muslim leaders
who travel for the purpose of soft power and public diplomacy are
subject to secondary screening upon return, treated like terror suspects
and are kept on the government watch list themselves. In this way they
are treated like prisoners, which creates a psychological pressure to
continue to participate so as to demonstrate they are ‘good’ people
having nothing to hide and have no ill-feelings toward America. Thus,
when one reads American Muslim organizational statements on Palestine
and tracks it with administration language, one finds that the
difference is minor because they have accepted the role of being in-bed
with Washington and its policies toward the Muslim world.Read full article: http://www.turkeyagenda.com/palestine-american-muslim-leadership-assimilationist-strategic-math-1082.html

As Western Muslims and American Muslims, we need to understand that the
values and principles we promote are not only Muslim values. American
Muslims live in a country where justice, dignity, freedom and equality
are essential values. The Muslim contribution to the future of America
is to not only speak out as Muslims, but to also speak out as citizens
in the name of our common values. Our main contribution is to reconcile
the American society with its own values, those that are not
in contradiction to Islam. We have a duty of consistency.

TIM: There
is scant evidence that moral outrage or moral clarity have any impact on
American foreign policy. In politics, morality is the handmaiden of
special interests. America has stood by idly during genocides
(like Rwanda), but then invokes genocide as a rationale for intervention
(like ISIS) when intervention serves a strategic political or economic
goal. At the same time, there is ample evidence that well-organized,
well-funded political machinery can not only influence, but also
actually dictate American foreign policy. How do you expect your words,
or any words, to change what America does? Or is that not the goal of
what you espouse?

Ramadan: It is
important to understand that we are dealing with politics, and politics
is mainly about interests. As Muslim citizens, we understand these
interests but we should put principles and dignity beyond everything. As
Muslims, our interests are our values. In any society, be it in
Western or Muslim-majority countries, our duty is that of critical
loyalty: Staying loyal to our countries by always being critically
engaged in the name of the principles of justice, equality and human
brotherhood. We should be the ethical and moral voice wherever we are by
saying that, even though we understand economic and geo-strategic
interests, we cannot accept a violation of these principles by any
society. In the West or anywhere else, the treatment of people in an
undignified way (structural and institutionalized racism against Latinos
or African American citizens) as well as a dangerous dehumanization of
some people (in Palestine, Iraq, Africa or Asia) are simply
unacceptable. As Muslims, we must have an active presence based on
ethical and moral consistency. We need to be very vocal, to inform
people, to demonstrate when necessary. We need to write so that
the people understand that what they are getting from the media and
politicians is biased and not accurate. And this is true especially when
it comes to some communities within the U.S. or with respect to the
Middle East and Africa. This is what I am expecting from a new
generation of leaders: Meet these expectations of moral consistency.

TIM: Can Muslims be within the system?

Ramadan: American
Muslims are already within the system. We should stop isolating
ourselves by thinking we are powerless. The youngest generations of
Americans have a better opinion of Islam because they interact with
Muslims. Half of young American citizens now are supporting the
Palestinians rather than the Israelis. Things are moving. If you do your
work, if you are committed at the grassroots level, if you have a
vision for the long run (not only short-sighted interest), you can
change public opinion. You are within the system. But if you are only
concerned with international issues and/or the power of some lobbies
that are influencing American policy, then you are isolating
yourselves. You are powerless in your mind when you don’t understand the
meaning and quality of your own real power. This is the problem we have
with many Muslim leaders: They claim to differentiate between domestic
and foreign issues and they are obsessed with being accepted, at sitting
at the table of power in order to talk (or rather to listen) and to be
tolerated. This is the starting point of our weakness. It is in our
minds because we do not realize we are part of the system.

Monday, June 16, 2014

If American Muslims can change their selves, they could change the world.

American Muslims are often higher educated and earning more than the
national average. The American Muslim community is spread in key swing
states and can have a tremendous impact on local and national elections.

More than just about any other so called “Muslim country,” the U.S.
offers American Muslims the legal freedom and protection to practice
their faith. Life in the United States also presents the opportunity to
grow financially, intellectually and participate in civic affairs, law,
politics and the pursuit of justice. Unlike most countries in the
Middle East, Muslims in America have both freedom to be who they want to
be and practice their faith, and freedom to engage in meaningful work
and civic engagement.

Many academics have explained in detail how the Islamophobia industry
spends millions of dollars to demonize Islam and Muslims in America
because they fear the impact American Muslims will have if they
flourish. The Islamophobia industry slanders Islam and Muslims in an
effort to make Muslims ashamed of their identity and thus turn us away
from the source of our strength: our faith, unity and community.

There is never an excuse for Muslims not to practice Islam in
America. Allah swt is with us and so is the law. Very few other
countries have laws that protect the right to practice our faith in the
public, schools, and workplace like the US. This is a blessing we must
acknowledge, appreciate and protect.
Granted, the system is not perfect. Mistakes have been made. America
has a history of gross civil rights violations from the slave trade to
Jim Crow Laws to the internment of Japanese Americans. Today the
indefinite detention without trial of humans in Guantanamo Bay Prison,
the unjustified spying on Muslims by the NYPD, attempts to outlaw the
practice of Islam in several states, and the FBI entrapment program
targeting the Muslim community are a few example of how America
continues to struggle with forces of tyranny that try to make this
nation stray from its great ideals of liberty, equality and justice.

Authors like Trevor Aaronson even detail government programs intended
to provoke Muslims to engage society destructively, which can in effect
hinder the Muslim community’s ability to effectively engage
constructively.

Despite these wrongs, we have the freedom to challenge these
injustices and will overcome them just as other minorities have overcome
them in the past and continue to struggle to do so today.
Few other nations allow minorities the opportunity to challenge
injustice and oppression as America, and while our nation is not
perfect, through the dedication of those devoted to striving for
justice, civil rights, and human dignity, it will, inshallah, improve.

However, American Muslims are not as effective or active as we should be.

We are the second largest religious minority in America, yet
Islamophobic attacks against Islam and Muslims are tolerated in
mainstream discourse which would never be tolerated against other
minorities. Over 300 Muslims globally are killed in wars started or
supported by western nations every day, and the American Muslim
community has yet to be effective in lobbying for a more peaceful and
just US foreign policy. Actually, we are still struggling to protect
civil rights domestically.

The amount of civil rights violations committed and liberty lost in
the name of fighting “Muslim extremists” has taken America back many
years when it comes to civil rights and justice. Ironically, it has also
made American Muslims stand out as leaders of the civil rights
movement.

Experience has shown me however that most American Muslims are
unaware of the civil rights and Islamophobia challenges our community is
facing. As a result, few Muslims are taking action to fulfill our
obligation as Americans and as Muslims to defend civil rights and
promote understanding of our faith and community.

American Muslims have the immense potential and opportunity to be
leaders for change. But we will not realize that potential unless we
make the most of the blessings of freedom and wealth God has blessed us
with. We must invest our time, energy, and wealth more constructively
than those who embrace hate and are investing their resources to
undermine our faith and liberty.

We
must first care about our faith, community, and civil rights. Then we
must understand the nature of the challenges we are facing. Only then
can we constructively engage the system to create positive change.

By working together with interfaith allies to push back against
efforts to promote fear and hatred that undermine liberty, we can ensure
America remains a free nation where children of people of all faiths
can grow up proud of their identity with the opportunity to learn about
the diverse faiths that make up our society.

A free and just society is the best society for our faith and community to flourish.

“What they were trying to do is to
convince the American public that there is this large army of potential
terrorists that they should all be very-very scared about. They are very
much engaged in world-wide surveillance and this surveillance is very
valuable to them. They can learn a lot about all sorts of things and in a
sense control issues to their advantage. And
the entire legal justification for that depends on there being a war on
terror. Without a war on terror they have no right to do this. So they
have to keep this war on terror going, they have to keep finding people
and arresting them and locking them up and scarring everybody,” states Steven Downs, attorney for Project SALAM.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

If a 22-year-old Muslim man stabbed his roommates to death in their
sleep, embarked on a killing spree, and claimed in written and video
manifestos that he acted to teach hated women a lesson, there's little
doubt that many would label him a terrorist. That label was scarcely
appended to the Santa Barbara killer after his murders.

And if a Muslim couple stormed into a fast-food restaurant armed with
a duffel bag full of military gear, shouted, "This is the beginning of
the revolution!" and pinned a flag associated with their political
movement to the dead bodies of the police officers they executed at
point-blank range—then killed another innocent person and carried out a
suicide pact rather than being taken alive—there is no doubt that many
media outlets would refer to the premeditated attack as an act of
terrorism. With a few exceptions, that's not how this week's news from
Las Vegas played out.

When mass killers are native-born whites, their motivations are
treated like a mystery to unraveled rather than a foregone conclusion.
And that is as it ought to be. Hesitating to dub the Santa Barbara and
Las Vegas murder sprees "terrorist attacks" is likely the right call.
The label casts more heat than light on breaking-news events. Americans
typically respond more soberly and rationally to mass killings than to
"terrorist attacks." And while both sprees obviously targeted civilians,
the varying degrees to which they sought to influence politics is
unclear.

That said, the pervasive double-standard that prevails is nevertheless objectionable. As Glenn Greenwald once observed,
"terrorism" is "simultaneously the single most meaningless and most
manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has
virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with
the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity."... [Read Full Article]

Thursday, June 5, 2014

...Comey is upholding the tradition that
once the government identifies an evil, the evil never goes away — it
only gets bigger and tougher, requiring ever-increasing efforts to
combat it. The Department of Energy was created during the "energy
crisis" of the 1970s. The crisis didn't last, but the department did.

The same pattern holds here. In the decade after Sept. 11,
the number of terrorist episodes in this country averaged 17 a year,
compared to 41 a year in the 1990s. Nor is al-Qaida gaining ground.
Since 9/11, reports the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism
and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, it has carried
out no attacks in the U.S.

But progress is never taken as progress. It's always interpreted as the calm before the storm.
When Comey arrived, nerves were raw from the Boston Marathon bombing,
which sparked fears of a wave of domestic attacks. Since then, there
has not been a single death from homegrown terrorism in the U.S. In the
following 12 months, the number of Muslim-Americans arrested on
terrorism charges was 15, below the annual average of 20.

"Almost all of these arrests were for attempting to join a foreign
terrorist organization abroad, not for planning attacks in the homeland,
and were motivated by sympathies with rebels in Syria and elsewhere
rather than by al-Qaida's call for Muslims to attack the West," wrote
David Schanzer of Duke University and Charles Kurzman of the University
of North Carolina Chapel Hill in The News and Observer of Raleigh.

None of this matters to Comey or his
associates in the federal government, which has an unbreakable addiction
to dire forecasts. When it comes to national security, they see every
silver lining as attached not just to a cloud, but to a skyful of black
thunderheads. Read Full Article

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

DOJ's New Recording Policy: The Exceptions Swallow The Rule

...FBI agents routinely conduct their interviews in pairs, with one agent
asking the questions and the other taking notes which are eventually
typewritten into what is known as a form 302 report. It has previously been
strictly against FBI policy to electronically record any of these interviews.
Without an objectively accurate, verbatim record of the interview, the witness
is compelled, forced even, to follow the script of the 302 report if it is
presented in a court of law. If the witness’ testimony strays from the agent’s
report, she opens herself up to afelony charge, for either making
“false statements” to a federal agent (at the time of the interview) or for
perjuring herself on the witnessstand. This is how the FBI is able to
coerce witnesses (or suspects)and shape their testimony.

Given the obviousdishonesty of this system, and the extent to which
the truth can be corrupted by FBI agents and federal prosecutors who are able
to teach their witnesses not only how to sing but also how to compose, it
seemed only a matter of time before the interview procedure would change. While
many think this memo will precipitate that shift, the devil is in the details
of the document, which provides so many exceptions that the new rule, to be
implemented on July 11th, will arrive stillborn.

…

This policy thus is so riddled with exceptions that it is less a policy than
a half-veiled attempt at improving the troubled public image of the DOJ and
FBI.Instead,such self-cancelling policies should only add
to the dubious reputation that federal law enforcement has gained in recent
years for its often over-zealous, selective and coercive prosecutions.

All citizens – both of the law-and-order variety as well as
civil libertarians– should want to see federal law enforcement practices become
more transparent and less accommodating to rogue agents and overzealous
prosecutors. Such reform will not be accomplished by enacting compromised
policies like this one. [Read More]